Pretty straightforward — given that we’re in the long haul of National Novel Writing Month, feels like a shorter, sharper flash fiction contest deserves to be in play. What does that mean?

It means I want you to write a single story in three sentences. The shorter those sentences are, the better. Remember: a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It is not merely a vignette — not simply a snapshot in time.

You can deposit this story in the comments below.

Due in one week — by Friday, noon EST.

I’ll pick three random participants on that Friday and will toss each winner a copy of my newest writing e-book, 30 Days in the Word Mines. (A book that has been described as an advent calendar for NaNoWriMo, which is a description I quite like.)

I’ve been thinking about the difficulties in hitting all 3 concisely. Seems either you do a lot of showing and lean towards a vignette, or do a lot of telling and lean towards a summary. Difficult task either way.

Scott clambered up the rollercoaster track, running calloused hands over metal worn smooth, and let his fingers search for flaws. He coughed, spat on the rails and thought of the long hours that had steadily robbed him of his health and the low pay that didn’t even cover the hospital bills. Later, as he watched the queue of excited customers and listened to their nervous chatter, he fingered the crumpled redundancy letter in his pocket, and his hands brushed very gently against the cold nuts and bolts.

I don’t want to hijack this at all, so please don’t take offence, but I’m also running a flash fiction opportunity on my site – 100-200 words and I’ll pick ones to send out along with backlinks to your profiles and books. If interested, click on my name and look under Author Opportunities in the menu. Thank you.

They killed me once, they killed me twice yet I have never died. We raised an army from shallow graves to take this world back. But then they came betraying me, stopping my many plans and although they won I see no death and yet I have no life.

It was a bit late for her sister’s murderer to be wailing and pleading now, with the noose around his neck and hands tied behind his back.
He’d had a choice, and now so did she, with blood money on the table.
She had never believed before in an eye for an eye, but considering what he’d done, she shrugged and pulled the lever to release the trapdoor.

Love it! This seems like a whole story — beginning, middle, and end. Of course, it inspires a lot of questions (why did he kill her sister? How did she catch him? and more) but it’s very complete in and of itself.

Thanks fran730. I was hoping to show that although she in principle didn’t believe in vengeance, when it actually came down to it, with the grief and anger she was feeling, principles went out the window.

I tried desperately to find three sentences, but like everything else recently, it just wasn’t working. I rummaged through my neurons filling my soul with sarcasm, until my fingers found the keyboard and a wicked little smile curled on my face. Chuck’s blog had three more sentences that day.

The marching soldiers crushed the snow underfoot as effortlessly as the opposition had crushed their comrades. Private Edgar’s father had fought and died in the Great War of 2032, and as a young recruit the Private had sworn he would never die in battle. Twenty years from now, on a different field but in the same conflict, his own son will swear an identical oath.

It’s not true that being autistic means I don’t want friends. I have ideas and thoughts that tumble around in my brain and when I catch them I want desperately to share them with someone; a friend would be nice. But my ideas won’t come out of my brain, and they never fit in with the people around me–though they would give them something to consider–and so with years and years of practice I learned to be my own friend, which is more than you can honestly say.

“I thought you were dead,” the dying man gasped. The executioner allowed a thin smile to form on his lips, remembering when his victim was his murderer. “I am,” he said quietly, withdrawing the knife and fading back into the shadows.

“What happens if we bite each other?” the werewolf growled.
“Let’th find out,” the vampire lisped, tongue catching on his fangs.
The resultant hairy, undead beings immediately slew each other over their name: vamp-wolves or were-pires.

José met the government’s thugs with a smile as they shattered his hut’s flimsy wooden door. He caressed Rosa’s pale cheek with blood-stained hands, painting it red. “You won’t hurt her again,” he whispered.

She gave birth to him as Fall ended, a healthy boy, and she wasn’t alone anymore. Throughout the long Winter, she showed him what love was and they were inseparable. At the beginning of Spring, God called him to a place she couldn’t go and she was alone again.

Before her death, the Witch of the South led the king’s strongest army to their doom. The king’s daughter, the leader of the army, fell under the influence of the witch’s enchantment, and led her men into the Forbidden Wood, where they were burned and eaten by the native dragons. But when the king finally found the witch and burned her at the stake, he was haunted by the fear in her eyes, and he wondered if his daughter had suffered in the same way.

She watched the red lights blink, hand in hand with her two boys, the noise getting closer with each second. The stars stared back at them through the window, who could have guessed forever would be so brief. The last door gave up with a clash and she pulled the lever, letting the universe have them.

She aimed for the region exactly between his eyes and pulled the trigger.
“Finally,” she muttered as a a dam of blood gushed forth from the gaping hole in his forehead.
She put the gun back in the holster and walked away as his body fell forwards.

Juan Carlos Torquemada y Torremolino bore an unbearable name. The oldest crones claimed to remember his great grandmother, who thought she was Span-nish, they would say when the coven convened on fiesta days. This grandmother was chocante, striking, which did not help matters, and when she announced her son’s name she sealed her own demise in the river of chisma.

Each sperm was fast, immortal and tireless, working through air or dust or water to find its lush, fertile destination. Each teenage spasm scattered his load worldwide, 40 million a go, making him the father of nations. All men became brothers, all women sisters, and then the problems really started.

Bound and chained to the call center desk for yet another endless day, she uncomfortably fidgets under the weight of her heavy headset as another customer screams into her ear, “You can take my overdue bill and fuck off, bitch!” As the verbal assault continues, profound melancholy saturates her psyche as she wonders at what point her brittle mind might break from the weight of her own unpaid bills and hungry mouths at home. Blaring horns and screeching tires thrust her awareness back to the present as she swerves into oncoming traffic, slams head on into a minivan, and right before the deepest darkness steals her consciousness, a word resounds through her mind – Rest.

This reminds me of that Ernest Hemingway legend – fiction in 6 words – “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” (That has translated into a whole culture and multiple books of 6-word memoirs – http://www.sixwordmemoirs.com/) …might be fun to read some as a catalyst.

Chloe woke in the night needing to use the bathroom, but she feared that if she stepped out of bed the monster underneath would snatch her away. “There’s no such thing as monsters,” her mother reassured her, so Chloe gathered her courage, crawled down, and peeked under the bed. A scaly purple hand reached out and dragged her under, and she was never heard from again.

“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” The in vitro procedure was judged a success, but Charles never walked like other children. Eighteen years later, the IOCC stripped him of his gold in the 100 meter freestyle for having an “unnatural advantage.”

She thought of how bears hibernate, the warm slumbering breath of them cutting through the thin icy wind of winter, a thaw that lasts only as long as one exhalation. Her hand lay on her heavy belly, an anchor, a slow sinking in an ocean that tastes like the sweat on his skin in the moments after they made love. She wondered if sleeping bears dream, and what they would dream of, and she thought they would recognize the way, in the world of almost-awake, her heart hangs suspended between winter and spring.

You want to know why I killed that guy? If your big brother is a thief, people don’t exactly trust you either. You can try to convince them you’re nothing like him (which nobody will believe anyway), or you do your best to turn out even worse.